This week someone who just recently learned about this adventure asked me, “Why the hell are you living in the trailer?” The simple answer is money.
If you know me well, you know that when we started getting serious about this renovation, we talked about logistics. If we moved out of the house, where would we go? What do we do with our pets? Our goats? We looked at some rentals online and quickly realized we’d be paying $2,000+ per month for rent on a house if we wanted someplace that would allow the pets. Then, we’d have to be at the house every day to check on the goats and feed them. And finding anyplace that would be flexible with a 6-9 month window was nearly impossible. It just didn’t make sense, even if we lived with family and skipped the rent.
At some point last spring, one of us brought up the idea of living in a trailer. I think it was me. Probably as a joke, but then it started to make sense. Mike is a teacher and over the summer we could spend a lot of time at his parent’s lake house. We could pay ourselves rent and just bank the money to help with the house. And we would be here all the time so none of the animals would be displaced other than the cats that officially got kicked out of the house. These same cats that never want to come inside when I want them to, not complain about not being allowed inside during construction. Go figure.
We went to the RV show because we started wondering if we could really do this and, if so, how big of a trailer did we need? We knew we didn’t want anything new because depreciation on a new RV would be compounded by the fact that we weren’t interested in keeping this trailer after the renovation. We realized that 30 feet and a separate bunk room were really the requirements to make this work after letting Darwin jump around in all the RVs. It gave us enough size without being too large (read expensive) and it also gave us a separate room for the kids so that we had some way to manage babies and toddlers sleeping as Trixie was still waking up 2-3 times a night.
We went to the local RV dealerships and quickly found this trailer. I wasn’t sold on it initially because it was a little more than we wanted to spend, but after watching used listings for a few weeks we realized it was pretty reasonable. I do a lot of automotive advertising so I have a great appreciation for the desperation that comes on the last day of the month when it comes to selling vehicles. We played our cards well and walked out with a great deal on the trailer.
I don’t think anyone thought we’d really do it, much less last this long, and tell people it was still the smart decision, but it was! I can’t wait to sell this thing and spend my rent money on a new leather sofa.